God speaks, and it is.
We speak, and then argue, and finally make it our way by force if need be.
Satan, in Milton’s Paradise Lost, considers God a tyrant who by wrath and vigor forces his so-called “goodness” upon the cosmos. The reality is that “goodness” is what the cosmos simply is.
God speaks, and “So be it,” is already too late a response.
Further, not unlike the great pagan kings of antiquity, it would appear that once God has spoken, it is not in his nature to take it back. Once a thing is created, it cannot be uncreated. There is no “uncreator” with the power to contend against the one and only Creator.
Instead, there are only rebels, liars and salesmen who intend to close the deal on your soul. By force, if need be. The pitch? This world is not upside down. Everything here always has the potential to be the way it was supposed to.
If your first reaction is to rush in and fix what I’m laying down, rather than figure out how to pick it up with me, recall that active is always the preferred stance of our fallen nature.
See the need. Rush in. Dash around. Be invigorating!
Until you collapse from exhaustion with nothing at all fixed quite the way you intended. This is because at the same time everyone else is doing the exact same thing as you, only with their own opinions, ideals and gods, which means that every third, fifth and thirteenth stone you set up is one someone else is bound to come along and put right back.
Why even bother?
Don’t.
Stop trying to make the world a better place. Doing so is a tacit statement that you think it is a bad place. The reason you do think it is a bad place is because it keeps putting itself back in order according to the design of a God who is not you, often right in the way of all your best plans.
So remember that the Valley of the Shadow is still a very good place. That’s the way its God made it, and even our dastardly arrogance can’t change that.
And then don’t forget to believe that you are that same good doubly over, first in the creation of your self in Adam, and from above in the redemption of that same self in resurrection of all men as the one man Jesus Christ.
Fixing everyone else’s world is a bad life-goal.
You’re not cut out to be your own Messiah, let alone anyone else’s.
You instead are made for Karpos, the “fruit” of Christian worship.
I plan to write a lot more about Karpos. I am increasingly convinced that the Christian threefold life of oratio, meditatio, and tentatio is dynamite in need of a pinch of grammarian/marketer’s discipline.
Suffice for today: the temple of Christian enlightenment, unlike all other paths, is raised one stone at a time.
There are no cathedrals.
There is only one Master.
His Karpos is your legacy.
Christianity is a promise you wake up to live. The entire point start to finish is that God has a plan to take care of you. He built this plan in eternity, so it’s a bit unlikely he’ll be changing his mind any time soon.
Once God has spoken, it is not in his nature to take it back.
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Be strong, and let your heart know courage. Rev. Fisk
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